A novel water-stable luminescent metal complex exhibiting high sensitive and selective detection to Fe3+ and Al3+

The application of metal complexes as fluorescent sensor materials has attracted great attention. In this work, we designed and synthesized a tetraphenyl ethylene-based zinc complex {[ZoLCl]center dot H2O}(n) (1), which not only has excellent water stability, but also shows good photoluminescence behavior. These properties endow 1 a good fluorescence detection ability to metal ions. The experimental results also confirm that the fluorescence behavior of 1 can be quenched by Fe3+ or Al3+ rapidly and sensitively. When other metal ions coexist with Fe3+ or Al3+, 1( ) can still effectively recognize Fe3+ or Al3+. It means that 1 is a potential fluorescent sensor material with super anti-interference ability to detect Fe3+ or Al3+. The reason is that there are weak interactions between Fe3+/Al3+ and oxygen atoms in 1. Since there's the competitive absorption between Fe3+ and 1, the quenching effect coefficient of Fe3+ is larger than that of Al3+ and the quenching effect is better than that of Al3+. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.